... Pioglitazone has been demonstrated to exert anti-fibrotic and renoprotective effects. But the detailed pharmacological mechanisms have not been clearly revealed. The present study aimed to investigate the possible mechanisms of pioglitazone in these two effects. TGF-β1-stimulated HK-2 cells and unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) mice were used as in vitro and in vivo models. The results showed ...

... DNA methylation is catalyzed by DNA methyltransferase (MTase) and concerned with many biological processes including pathogenesis of various human diseases. The monitoring of MTase activity is thus of great significance in disease diagnosis and drug screening. Herein, we developed a facile way to synthesize biocompatible invertase enzyme modified metal-organic framework (Invertase/MOF) materials, ...

... The accurate detection and characterization of geological structures are of primary importance for tectonic trend analysis, mineral and water resource exploration, major engineering projects, and geological disaster prevention. However, interpretation and mapping of geological structures by means of manual interpretation are inefficient and high-cost, and the performance varies greatly with the ex ...

... The objective of this study was to develop kinetic models to predict the growth of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in raw Pacific white shrimp as affected by storage temperature. Shrimp samples inoculated with a 2-strain cocktail of V. parahaemolyticus were stored between 8 and 35 °C to observe the growth during storage. The growth curves were analyzed with two primary models (Huang model and No-lag phase ...

... We propose a Sparse-Group Independent Component Analysis (SG-ICA) method to extract independent factors from high dimensional multivariate data. The method provides a unified and flexible framework that automatically identifies the number of factors and simultaneously estimates a sparse loading matrix, enables us to discover important features and offers improved interpretability of the estimators ...

... Understanding residue and soil behaviour under the impact of tillage tools is critical for designing tools for conservation tillage. A soil-tool-residue interaction model was developed for a sweep and oat straw using the discrete element method. Soil, sweep, and straw were modelled using spherical particles, walls, and clumps respectively. A virtual field consisting of two layers including a soil ...

... Toxicological evidence indicates that exposure to drinking water trihalomethanes (THMs) can impair neural development. However, no epidemiologic study to date has evaluated the relation of trihalomethanes exposure with neonatal neurobehavioral development. Here we aimed to evaluate if prenatal exposure to THMs during early pregnancy is associated with neonatal neurobehavioral development in 451 Ch ...

... The fruits of Xanthium strumarium L., Asteraceae, have been used for various diseases in Chinese folk medicine, including allergic rhinitis, tympanitis, arthritis, ozena etc. The current study was aimed to investigate the therapeutic effects of caffeoylquinic acids from fruits of X. strumarium on allergic rhinitis in animals. The toxicity test indicated that the caffeoylquinic acids have no obviou ...

... (−)-Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), the main bioactive component of tea catechins, exhibits broad-spectrum health efficacy against mitochondrial damage after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The mechanisms, however, are largely unknown. Here, the ability of EGCG to rescue mitochondrial dysfunction and mitochondrial dynamics following the inhibition of cell death was investigated by using in vitro ...

... Distributed generation is being increasingly integrated into distribution networks. Controllable devices whose reactive power can be regulated, such as capacitor banks and soft open points, can be coordinately allocated to regulate the voltage of distribution networks to accommodate the high penetration of distributed generation. This paper proposes a coordinated optimal allocation method for dist ...

... The mass loading and composition of atmospheric particles are important in determining their climate and health effects, and are typically measured by filter sampling. However, particle sampling under ambient conditions can lead to a shift in the size cut-off threshold induced by hygroscopic growth, and the influence of this on measurement of particle loading and composition has not been adequatel ...

... The quantification of preservatives in cosmetics has attracted great attentions for their controversial and widespread use. HPLC is a prevailing method for preservatives determination among various analytical methods. However, it takes long time to fully separate these compounds because of the complexity of cosmetic matrices. In this study, a fast and green HPLC-DAD strategy assisted with second-o ...

... Forecasting natural gas demand and supply is essential for an efficient operation of the German gas distribution system and a basis for the operational decisions of the transmission system operators. The German gas market is moving towards more short-term planning, in particular, day-ahead contracts. This increases the difficulty that the operators in the dispatching centre are facing, as well as ...

... This study examined the effect of potassium permanganate (KMnO₄)-modified activated carbon for formaldehyde removal under different face velocities and different initial formaldehyde concentrations in building environment. We chose the coconut shell activated carbon due to their high density and purity. Moreover, they have a clear environmental advantage over coal-based carbons, particularly in te ...

... Both targeted and stimuli-sensitive drug-delivery systems (DDSs) have been developed to augment antitumor effects. However, lack of knowledge regarding tumor tissue targeting and different effects of the stimuli-sensitive DDSs in orthotropic and ectopic tumors have impeded further advances in their clinical applications. Herein, we first reported a pH-triggered micelle with sialic acid (SA)-driven ...

... This study was conducted to investigate the effects of embryonic short-term exposure to benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), a model polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, on ovarian development and reproductive capability in adult female zebrafish. In 1-year-old fish after embryonic exposure to BaP for 96 h, the gonadosomatic indices and the percentage of mature oocytes were significantly decreased in the 0.5, 5 and ...

... Epigenetic mechanisms, such as altered DNA methylation, may participate in the relationship between prenatal phthalate exposure and adverse birth outcomes.To explore the mediation effect of DNA methylation in the associations of phthalate exposure before delivery with birth outcomes in a Chinese cohort.Eight phthalate metabolites in maternal urine before delivery and DNA methylation of Alu and lon ...

... This study presents a model for quantifying the performance of primary nozzles within the context of ejectors in the refrigeration systems. The effects of real and ideal gas properties are compared and two equations for the two-phase speed of sound are tested against experimental data for vapor nozzles working with R245fa, N2 and R141b and also a two-phase nozzles processing CO2. Results show that ...

... Discrimination of geographical origin of extra-virgin olive oils (EVOOs) is of great importance for legislation and consumers worldwide. The feasibility of a rapid discrimination of four different geographical origins of EVOOs with terahertz spectroscopy system was examined. Different chemometrics including least squares-support vector machines (LS-SVM), back propagation neural network (BPNN) and ...